Doubt
by BasementOfTheMansion
Summary: Notes scribbled in the margins of the Book of Love.
1. Her Kind of Humor

**What You Find While Looking For Something Else**

**Chapter: **Her Kind of Humor  
**Rating: **K  
**Disclaimer: **Not mine, no profit made  
**A/N: **Gasp! Something else happened in "The Job" besides Jim asking Pam out? Only one of the best Pam/Dwight friendship plots ever...

* * *

As she takes the title of Secret Assistant to the Regional Manager Pam knows exactly what Jim would do. Well, not exactly what he'd do... Jim would never actually get the position, but she knows what he'd egg her own to do. She takes the title in that spirit, with Jim's patented phrase of affirmation. She's just trying to make a lonely day a little more exciting.

But she finds, mildly to her surprise, that she doesn't want to pull that kind of prank on her own. She knows she's done a lot of stuff to Dwight over the years, and only a fraction of it was wholly her idea. She doesn't feel the impetus to bother him, just to make Jim laugh.

Even more to her surprise, she feels free not to do it. There's no peer pressure. He's not there. Maybe he's never coming back.

She almost feels like she could deal with that.

Sitting there in the conference room as her coworkers grow restive, Pam can almost hear Jim, like a little devil-voice on her shoulder, a snarky comment crafted with anarchy in mind leaving lips that curled so easily into a disarming smile.

"Hey! Come on! Let's listen to Dwight's presentation!"

She's as surprised as anyone when they listen to her, but they do. She leans back, satisfied for some reason.

The clumsy wink Dwight throws her is funnier than the prospect of everyone simply walking out on their power-drunk leader's presentation.

This is her kind of humor, she decides.

* * *

A/N II: This is a little miniseries I've been kicking around... Being throughly sick of Jam and rings and cloying, cloying fluff, I thought I'd do a few perspectives of scenes in which Pam could have moments of doubt. It won't be explictly anti-Jam, but not will it be especially pro-Jam, either.

Special thanks to MrsBigTuna for directing me to the correct place to get episode transcripts!


	2. Just Yours

**What You Find While Looking For Something Else**

**Chapter:** Just Yours  
**Rating:** K  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine. No profit made.  
**A/N:** Set after the disaster of Jim joining the FTC.

* * *

Sorry_, she mouths to her frowning companions as they look at her in exasperation._

_Meanwhile, Jim's expression crashes and burns._

_For the first time, the Finer Things Club disbands in a sour mood._

The next day, Pam's in the kitchen, shockingly alone for once as she watches her Lean Cuisine meal spin around in the microwave.

Toby sidles into the room from the annex, looking uncertain. She smiles at him. "Hey, you."

"Hey." He returns her smile with a melancholy twist of his lips.

As usual when talking to Toby outside the club, she finds a kind of void in the conversation where his part should be, and, as usual, she fills it up. "Sorry about... all that yesterday. I was just trying to cheer Jim up."

"Oh, that's okay. We have to kick you out now though."

The delivery is so deadpan, it takes her a second to register that it's only a joke.

"I understand," she says, letting her head droop in shame. "The Club is very exclusive, after all." Another smile ruins her acting, and Toby grins weakly in return.

The microwave beeps behind her, and she turns to delicately take the cardboard tray out and set it on the counter.

She's aware that Toby's watching her, but constant filming has eroded her self-consciousness to some extent and she doesn't really think anything of it.

She feels the vacuum again, and it's drawing words into her mouth but she isn't sure it she should say them.

Then again... It's Toby. The innocuous HR guy. Her friend.

She peels the lid off the tray to vent the steam. "It's weird," she says, still looking at her food. "I thought sharing the kind of books I like with Jim would make us closer, but... it didn't." There's more to say, but it's gotten bottlenecked in her throat, overlapping sentiments she isn't sure she wants to share.

"It's okay to have something that's just yours," Toby says quietly.

She looks over her shoulder and catches his eye. He smiles again, only it looks a little more sincere, while the curve that finds its way onto her lips has grown slightly melancholy.

"Thanks," she says simply.

He shrugs a little. "No problem," he says in his simple, resigned way, and slips back into the annex like the end of a ghost story.

As she picks up her lunch, she spots Jim heading purposefully towards her and her mind shifts into a different gear. It never occurs to her to wonder what Toby went into the break room for, anyway.

* * *

A/N II: Pam/Toby trumphs Pam/Jim any day of the week! There! I said it! Flame me if you like, but review!


	3. System Fail

**What You Find While Looking For Something Else**

**Chapter:** System Fail  
**Rating:** K  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine. No profit made.  
**A/N:** Launch Party really bummed me out, Dwangela-wise...

* * *

It isn't the bear-horn that convinces Pam to pull the sentient computer prank on Dwight. It's Jim.

She wouldn't be doing it without his snarky, pleading look, his utter conviction that this is the natural order of things.

It's funny, though, and Dwight's charged up on anger and his incessant determination that's two parts annoying and one part admirable. It feels like the old days, and she forgets that he's teetering at the edge of a cliff she's been at before.

He wins the challenge, which is kind of funny as well.

She watches him tail Angela, high on victory, and it's still like the old days watching them try to hide their romance from a room full of people who couldn't care less.

Only it's not the old days, she remembers too late, because he walks back to a desk like a man trapped in a nightmare he's desperate to wake up from. Angela's suddenly at her desk, barking at her to be set up with a man, steely eyes brimming with angry satisfaction as she aims every word like a deadly shruiken at Dwight's heart before storming away.

He looks lost and pale under the fluorescent lights, holding back tears with every ounce of his willpower, a shell of his former self with ridiculous stubble spread over his face. Only now it's not ridiculous-funny, just ridiculous-sad.

She wants to do something, but she's trapped by her desk and the lingering rules against public admission of Dwight and Angela's relationship, and she isn't even sure he'd listen to her, even if she did know how to express her sympathy.

She thinks of a lonely hallway, and how any words are better than none at all.

_**DunMif/sys: **__You defeated me. You are the superior being._

But the look on his face doesn't change, and the game feels flimsy and cruel.

She wonders how it got to this.

* * *

A/N II: Jim truly pissed me off in pranking Dwight while he was in a fragile state of mind. I thought the sentient computer thing was one of the least-funny things they've done to him. But Pam's little epilogue to it gave me the same PaDF fuzzies as the hallway scene, so it's not a total loss.

That may be all for a while as to this series. I've got other fics on my plate.


End file.
